Sons of Summer

After some awfully hamfisted exposition, 4 friends (seemingly only friends because their Dads are mates) decide on a road trip for a very weakly established plot point. Along the way they make terrible decisions and act like they're in a first time community theatre production. I can't stress this enough- this is awful and my best guess is someone did this as a favour to someone who needed money laundered. There's NO reason. For this film to exist. Not so bad it's good, just bad. Not enough substance here to write anything more on the film so I'll end on saying Rasputin by Bony M is a killer track.

The scenery and surfing is great, the plot has a good story line and is carried really well by the main actors being Temura Morrison and Joe Davidson. Alex Fleri has some really good action shots and is believable in his part.

Isabel Lucas parts her part well, but her part could have had many more exciting and meaningful scenes which would have highlighted her part, I believe most movies require good female scenes to bring the movie "home".

Plently of ocean shots and some excitingly good surfing is captured - so if you like to watch surfing close to a beach with a good story line and good waves then you'll love this movie.

Because if you do, let me tell you, Sons of Summer isn't it.

Based on the flimsiest of pretexts, four surfers whose fathers were friends 30 years ago decide to go on a road trip together along with a huge quantity of drugs one of them has stolen from a local paint-by-numbers gangster. There's no connection between the characters, the acting is as wooden as their surfboards, the plot has holes you could drive a bus through, the cinematography reminds me of the sort found in Aussie movies from 40 years ago, and the whole thing has the feel of an overly long episode of Home and Away directed by someone who loved Baywatch as a kid.

It's not as if Sons of Summer falls into that "so bad it's good" category, it's just an awful, awful movie.

I feel like I'm losing my mind reading these 9-10/10 reviews. This movie was so bad that I can only conclude those people watched something entirely different. This movie would have been a lot better if it had picked a lane. At times it was a good-times summer surfing movie, a road trip movie, and a crime thriller. The problem was that none of those things seemed to be dominant or done very well. The movie also centered around the one guy's dad who was murdered 30 years ago, which means these guys were all at least 30. They did not look 30 or act 30. I also feel like that random thing was completely unnecessary. It wasn't even like the guy needed closure or some part of his life wrapped up, it was just something that happened. That led to the road trip which barely happened. It took over 40 minutes for them to even leave town and then they spent maybe 20 minutes actually doing road trip stuff before going back to what they were already doing. This movie also had at least 8 different surfing montages, one of which wasn't even of the main characters. The biggest problem though was that the acting was terrible and the dialogue was extremely bad. Everything was so stiff and inorganic that it was impossible to pretend this was anything other than a poorly made movie. I don't think that there was really much to redeem this movie; it was poorly made and boring.

Part surfing movie part thriller the film is kind of a sequel to Avalon's Summer City released 46 years ago the premiere of which I attended. What I loved about it was in part the nostalgic elements as it referenced the original film which starred a few unknown actors like Steve Bisley and Mel Gibson. This film manages to work as a study of Australian mateship and the contemporary surfie culture that has existed in Australia for decades. The surf sequences are dazzling and elegant and the movie moves with a taut briskness. One hopes it gets publicity on home turf and finds an audience. In the US the movie is playing in select AMC theaters and on demand through Apple etc. Grade B.